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 Beyond Cosmopolitanism
Towards Planetary Transformations

Edited by Ananta Kumar Giri

Beyond Cosmopolitanism
 Ananta Kumar Giri
Editor

Beyond
Cosmopolitanism
Towards Planetary Transformations
Ananta Kumar Giri
Madras Institute of Development Studies
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

ISBN 978-981-10-5375-7    ISBN 978-981-10-5376-4 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-5376-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017952663

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.

Cover design by Ran Shauli

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

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The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-­01/04 Gateway East, Singapore
189721, Singapore
For Margaret Chatterjee, Bhikhu Parekh and Pratibha Roy
 Foreword

Globalization is a catchword of our time. Taken by itself, the term only

refers to a process of spatial expansion—while leaving the ethical and polit-
ical dimensions of the process in the dark. The real question, however, is,
what kind of people will inhabit this expanded space, and in which manner
will they do so? It is in reference to this issue that the term “cosmopolitan-
ism” is commonly employed. Implicit in this word is the notion that peo-
ple live somehow as “citizens of the world” and that their manner of living
transforms the world into a precious shared habitat or “cosmos.” What is
conjured up by the latter term is not a soulless uniformity or bland monot-
ony but rather the sense of a “coincidentia oppositorum”: of a harmony in
disharmony, of concord in discord, or a unity in the midst of staggering
diversity.
Taken in this sense, cosmopolitanism is far removed from some promi-
nent trends of our time. Almost everywhere we find a disturbing tendency
to embrace discord and disharmony, a hankering for exclusive identity
completely aloof of shared ways of life. In opposition to an earlier celebra-
tion of multiculturalism, we find in many places an upsurge of xenopho-
bia, of national or ethnic chauvinism, of the desire to erect dividing walls
and barriers between peoples. This is what the poet Heine described as the
descent into a “shabby and coarse” kind of backwardness. To be sure,
what is wrong here is not a certain attachment to “roots,” a moderate and
unassuming cultivation of local traditions and customs. Perversion enters
when attachment becomes a source of ill will, hatred and unilateral
aggression.

vii
viii Foreword

Recognition of the darker sides of our time provides no dispensation

from struggle. Precisely in view of the rising tide of xenophobia it is imper-
ative to uphold the vision of cosmopolitanism. The present volume tries to
do exactly this. The book does not only talk about cosmopolitanism but
exemplifies in its own structure and content the meaning of the term. The
chapters have been contributed by distinguished writers hailing from dif-
ferent corners of the world and approaching the topic from diverse angles
or perspectives. The editor, Ananta Kumar Giri, is himself the epitome of
a cosmopolitan scholar, having visited the majority of the world’s coun-
tries and having acquired an enviable reputation as a multicultural, multi-
lingual, and multifaceted intellectual. One can only wish this book the
greatest possible circulation.
University of Notre Dame Fred Dallmayr
 Preface

Being with our home and the world with creative openness which facili-
tates co-learning and self, social, cultural and world transformations is a
perennial challenge with us since the dawn of humanity. The discourse of
cosmopolitanism embodies this yearning and challenge of humanity to be
with the world not only as citizens of the world but also as children of
Mother Earth. Beyond Cosmopolitanism: Towards Planetary Transformations
explores these multiple yearnings and contestations over the discourse and
practice of cosmopolitanism.
The book began with my participation in a symposium with Martha
Nussbaum on her book, Frontiers of Justice, held at the Institute of Social
Studies, The Hague, in March 2006 which was organized by my dear
friend Professor Des Gasper, who is also a contributor to this volume. I
had composed my essay, “Cosmopolitanism and Beyond: Towards a
Multiverse of Transformations,” for this symposium, which then had come
out in Development and Change in 2006. After this I had organized work-
shops on this at the Institute of Sociology, the University of Freiburg,
Germany, in February 2007 and at Indus Business Academy, Bangalore
and Greater Noida, in which some of the contributors of this volume had
taken part. The book draws upon contributions in these workshops and
then has other invited contributions.
It is a joy for us to dedicate this book to Margaret Chatterjee, Bhikhu
Parekh and Pratibha Roy—three inspiring seekers, scholars and writers of
our present-day world. Margaret Chatterjee is a philosopher but her philo-
sophical works and meditations are truly cosmopolitan as they move across
religious and philosophical traditions. She is also a poetess, and her work

ix
x Preface

in philosophy embodies a deep participation with the pain of humanity as

she writes in her essay on life world about problems of malnutrition:

On this side of the wall children have milk to drink at least once a day. On the
other side, one pawa of milk has to stretch for glasses of tea for five adults plus
children. A six year old girl told me this. Near the milk shop there are three
mithai shops. This is where the bulk of the milk goes. Consciousness cries out
for transformation, a consciousness imbued with conscience. Such a con-
sciousness would grow laterally, horizontally, turning the search light of atten-
tion on the endless anomalies around us, the endless injustices and lack of any
sense of priorities. (Chatterjee 2005a: 16; also see Chatterjee 2005b)

Cosmopolitan realization depends upon such horizontal crying

consciousness.
Bhikhu Parekh has also explored work of such consciousness across
traditions especially as he has creatively elaborated pathways of Gandhi
(Parekh 2016). Pratibha Roy has explored life, letters and the world with
passion, sympathy and understanding and she has also explored women’s
struggles for liberation across myths, society and histories. Her novel in
Odia about Draupadi entitled Yajaseni, which has been translated into
English as Draupadi, has touched many people’s heart. For her work she
has been awarded Gyanapeetha, a high literary award from India. Her
work raises new challenges for cosmopolitan realizations of justice, espe-
cially gender justice, across borders and traditions.
This book has been long in the making and I am grateful to the con-
tributors for their kindness, patience and support. I am grateful to Sarah
Crowley and Connie, Li in Palgrave for their support of this project.
I thank Mr. Aswhin V for his help. Finally, I hope this book enkindles
our imagination and engagement for a new cosmopolitan engagement as
explored in the following two poems:

An Evening of Breaking Boxes

Towards a New Cosmopoetics of World Citizenship
It has been an evening of breaking boxes
not of breaking news
Your lectures on cosmopolitanism
and world citizenship
have broken our many boundaries
between states and faiths
 Preface 
   xi

rivers and the sky

I now rush to touch the river
beyond the trap of my social security number
Each breaking
is a moment of awakening
You say citizenship is work and meditation
With beauty, dignity and dialogues
I now pause
have patience and realize
I can start my work and meditations
right at this moment
My work and meditation
is part of an ecology of hope
Hope not only falls from the sky
It is born out of our strivings
Bio-aesthetic strivings and spiritual strivings
Hope work
With and beyond the landscape
of despair
a new self-making
Foundations for a new community
A new science and spirituality
A new cosmopolitanism as part of a new cosmology of being
A new cosmopoesis of citizenship
A new cosmopoesis of our world
Kissing grandeur in each other
In our sour sweet lips. (Giri 2017)

I hope that one day all

Nations great and small
Will be able to stand up and say
We lived in the pursuit of peace for all
May be then there will come a day
When instead of saying “God bless America,”
Or “God bless some other country,”
Every one everywhere will say,
“God Bless the World”. (Ali with Ali 2004: xxi)

Holi, Festival of Colors, March 2017, Ananta Kumar Giri

Madras Institute of Development Studies,
Chennai, India
xii Preface

References

Ali, Muhammad with Hana Ali. 2004. The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections
on Life’s Journey. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Chatterjee, Margaret. 2005a. Life World, Philosophy and India Today.
Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Studies.
———. 2005b. Gandhi and the Challenge of Religious Diversity: Religious
Pluralism Revisited. New Delhi & Chicago: Promilla & Co.
Giri, Ananta Kumar. 2017. Weaving New Hats: Our Half-Birth Days.
Delhi: Studera Press.
Parekh, Bhikhu. 2000 Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity
and Political Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———. 2001. Gandhi. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2016. Debating India: Essays on Indian Political Discourse. Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
Ray, Pratibha. 2013. Yajnaseni: The Story of Draupadi. Delhi: Rupa.
 Contents

1 Beyond Cosmopolitanism: An Invitation to Adventure

of Ideas and Multiverse of Transformations  1
Ananta Kumar Giri

Part I Cosmopolitanism and Beyond: Alternative

Pathways of Explorations and Experimentations 11

2 Cosmopolitanism and Beyond: Towards Planetary

Realizations 13
Ananta Kumar Giri

3 Cosmopolitanism Beyond Anthropocentrism:

The Ecological Self and Transcivilizational Dialogue 33
John Clammer

4 Cosmopolitanism Beyond the Polis: Creative Memory

Works and Reimagining the Relationship Between Xenia
and Hestia 53
Ginna Brock

xiii
xiv Contents

5 Cosmopolitanism, the Cognitive Order of Modernity,

and Conflicting Models of World Openness: On the
Prospects of Collective Learning 71
Piet Strydom

6 Cosmopolitanism and Understanding in the Social

Sciences 95
Boike Rehbein

7 Ethics of Cosmopolitanism: The Confucian Tradition109

Karl-Heinz Pohl

8 Tolstoy and Cosmopolitanism121

Christian Bartolf

9 Cosmopolitanism, Spirituality and Social Action:

Mahatma Gandhi and Rudolf Steiner131
Ulrich Rösch

10 The Divergent Cosmopolitanisms of Hannah Arendt149

Liz Sutherland

11 Cosmopolitanism and an Ethics of Sacrifice181

Scott Schaffer

Part II Beyond Cosmopolitanism: Complex Histories,

Inadequate Theories and Challenges of
Transformations213

12 Cosmopolitanism and Reconciliation in a Postcolonial

World215
Reinhart Kössler
 Contents 
   xv

13 Corporealising Cosmopolitanism: The “Right” of Desire233

Anjana Raghavan and Jyotirmaya Tripathy

14 Old and Emerging Cosmopolitan Traditions at the

Malabar Coast of South India: A Study with Muslim
Students in Kozhikode, Kerala257
Barbara Riedel

15 De-orientalising Vernacular Cosmopolitanism: Towards

a Local Cosmopolitan Ethics275
Pnina Werbner

Part III Beyond Cosmopolitanism and the Calling of

Planetary Realizations297

16 Some Conceptual and Structural Problems of Global

Cosmopolitanism299
Hauke Brunkhorst

17 Human Rights, Universalism and Cosmopolitanism:

Between Cultures and Civilizations327
Vittorio Cotesta

18 The Hermeneutic Foundations of a Cosmopolitan

Public Sphere357
Hans-Herbert Kögler

19 From Shahrukh Khan to Shakira: Reflections on

Aesthetico-cultural Cosmopolitanism Among Young
French People377
Vincenzo Cicchelli and Sylvie Octobre
xvi Contents

20 Cultivating Humanity? Education and Capabilities

for a Global ‘Great Transition’389
Des Gasper and Shanti George

 fterword: Beyond Cosmopolitanism: Humanity’s

A
Evolutionary Imperative!423
Marcus Bussey

Index 427
 Notes on Editor and Contributors

Ananta Kumar Giri is a professor at the Madras Institute of Development

Studies, Chennai, India. He has taught and done research in many univer-
sities in India and abroad, including Aalborg University, Denmark; Maison
des sciences de l’homme, Paris, France; the University of Kentucky, USA;
University of Freiburg & Humboldt University, Germany; Jagiellonian
University, Poland; and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.
He has an abiding interest in social movements and cultural change, criti-
cism, creativity and contemporary dialectics of transformation, theories of
self, culture and society, and creative streams in education, philosophy and
literature. Giri has written and edited around two dozen books in Odia
and English, including Global Transformations: Postmodernity and Beyond
(1998); Sameekhya o Purodrusti (Criticism and Vision of the Future,
1999); Patha Prantara Nrutattwa (Anthropology of the Street Corner,
2000); Conversations and Transformations: Toward a New Ethics of Self
and Society (2002); Self-Development and Social Transformations? The
Vision and Practice of Self-Study Mobilization of Swadhyaya (2008); Mochi
o Darshanika (The Cobbler and the Philosopher, 2009); Sociology and
Beyond: Windows and Horizons (2012); Knowledge and Human Liberation:
Towards Planetary Realizations (2013); Philosophy and Anthropology:
Border-Crossing and Transformations (co-edited with John Clammer,
2013); and New Horizons of Human Development (editor, 2015).

Christian Bartolf (born 1960) is an educational and political scientist

from Berlin and (since November 1993) the president of the society
Gandhi Information Center, Research and Education for Nonviolence—

xvii
xviii Notes on Editor and Contributors

www.nonviolent-resistance.info. From 1991 to 2011, he counselled more

than 20,000 war resisters, from 2008 to 2017 he has curated 16 exhibi-
tions on nonviolence (La Boétie, Thoreau, Ruskin, Tolstoy, Doukhobors,
Gandhi, Tagore, King, Kraus, Tucholsky, Ossietzky, Borchert, Poems and
Paintings against War, Monuments against War, Erasmus, Schweitzer),
and from 1993 to 2017 he has organized the international “Manifesto
against conscription and the military system”—www.themanifesto.info.
His English-language publications are the first biography on Hermann
Kallenbach: Mahatma Gandhi’s Friend in South Africa, the correspon-
dences of Mahatma Gandhi with Leo Tolstoy and Bart de Ligt, and an
academic publication on the background of the Buber-Gandhi
controversy.
Fred Dallmayr is Packey J. Dee Professor Emeritus in Philosophy and
Political Science at the University of Notre Dame (USA). He holds a
Doctor of Law from the University of Munich and a PhD from Duke
University (USA). He has been a visiting professor at Hamburg University
and at the New School for Social Research in New York, and a Fellow at
Nuffield College in Oxford. During 1990–91 he was in India on a
Fulbright Research Grant. He is past president of the Society for Asian and
Comparative Philosophy (SACP). He has served Co-Chair of the World
Public Forum – “Dialogue of Civilizations” in Vienna. He has published
some 35 books, and over 200 articles in professional journals. Among his
recent books are: Being in the World: Dialogue and Cosmopolis (2013),
Freedom and Solidarity (2015) and Democracy to Come: Politics as
Relational Praxis (2017).

Ginna Brock is a Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at the

University of the Sunshine Coast (USC). Her research focuses on philo-
sophical concepts of belonging and connectivity, particularly looking at
the representation of the familial in literature. Her research also examines
pedagogical practices, proposing innovative ways to deliver course mate-
rial: ‘Teaching Shakespeare through Familial Identity: Exploring the
Centrality of Home in Romeo and Juliet’ in Teaching Shakespeare Beyond
the Centre: Australasian Perspectives (2013) and ‘Teaching the Art of
Re-Creation’ (2016). Currently, Ginna is researching the representation
of the refugee in contemporary literature while co-writing a tragic play
with Dr Jo Loth titled The Centre. As a member of USC’s Arts Research
in Creative Humanities (ARCH) research cluster, Ginna collaborates on
 Notes on Editor and Contributors 
   xix

both creative and critical research investigating phenomenological repre-

sentations in literary works.

Hauke Brunkhorst is Professor of Sociology at the European University

of Flensburg, Germany. His research fields are critical theory, social evolu-
tion and sociology of constitutions. During the 2009–10 academic year,
he was the Theodor Heuss Professor at the New School for Social
Research, New York. He is the author of many books, amongst them are
Solidarity: From Civic Friendship to a Global Legal Community (2005) and
Critical theory of legal revolutions—evolutionary perspectives (2014).

Marcus Bussey is a futurist and researcher with the Arts Research in the
Creative Humanity’s Centre, University of the Sunshine Coast. He is inter-
ested in cultural processes that energise social transformation. He uses
futures thinking to challenge the dominant beliefs and assumptions that
constrain human responses to rapid cultural, social and technological
change. Marcus has a fascination with the poetics of anticipation and its
expression through aesthetics, heritage, myth and literature. His work-
shops, research and writing all focus on the quest for individual and collec-
tive empowerment and creative and hopeful pathways to the future.
Marcus has held fellowships at Nanyang Technical University, Singapore,
and Tamkang University, Taiwan. He is Discipline Head of History and
Program Leader in Futures Studies at his university.

Vincenzo Cicchelli is an associate professor at the University Paris

Descartes and a research fellow at GEMASS (CNRS/Paris Sorbonne). He
is the series editor of “Youth in a Globalizing World”. His primary research
and teaching interests are in global studies, cosmopolitanism, interna-
tional comparisons and youth conditions in the Euro-Mediterranean area.
His latest books are Pluriel et commun. Sociologie d’un monde cosmopolite
(Presses de Sciences Po, 2016); (with V. Cotesta and M. Nocenzi, eds.)
Global Society, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights (2013); L’autonomie
des jeunes (La documentation Française, 2013); L’esprit cosmopolite.
Voyages de formation des jeunes en Europe (Presses de Sciences Po, 2012);
(with G. Truc, ed.) De la mondialisation au cosmopolitisme (La documen-
tation Française, 2011).

Vittorio Cotesta was Professor of Sociology at the Department of

Sciences of Education at the University Roma Tre. He is also the editor of
xx Notes on Editor and Contributors

the Carocci’s series Globus. Perspectives on Europe, Global Society,

Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights and member of the board of the
Brill’s series ISSA: International Studies in Sociology and Social
Anthropology. He has conducted research on language, modernity, cul-
tural processes, ethnic conflicts, global society and European identity. His
latest works are Kings into Gods: How Prostration Shaped Eurasian
Civilizations (2015); Modernity and Capitalism: An Essay on Max Weber
and China (2015); Global Society and Human Rights (2012); and Sociology
of Ethnic Conflicts (2009).

John Clammer is a professor in the Jindal School of Liberal Arts and

Humanities at O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Delhi National
Capital Region, India. He was formerly Professor of Development
Sociology at the United Nations University, Tokyo, and prior to that, for
almost two decades, was Professor of Comparative Sociology and Asian
Studies at Sophia University, Tokyo. He has taught at the University of
Hull and the National University of Singapore, and has been a visiting
professor or fellow at the Universities of Essex, Oxford, Kent, Buenos
Aires, Weimar, Handong (South Korea), Pondicherry (India), the
Australian National University and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies,
Singapore. His most recent books include Culture, Development and Social
Theory: Towards an Integrated Social Development (2012), Art, Culture
and International Development: Humanizing Social Transformation
(2015) and, most recently, Cultures of Transition and Sustainability
(Palgrave Macmillan 2016).

Des Gasper studied economics and international development at the

universities of Cambridge and East Anglia in Britain and worked through
the 1980s in Africa. He teaches public policy analysis and discourse analy-
sis at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, a gradu-
ate institute of Erasmus University Rotterdam, as professor of human
development, development ethics, and public policy. His co-edited publi-
cations include Arguing Development Policy (Frank Cass, 1996),
Development Ethics (Ashgate, 2010), Trans-National Migration and
Human Security (Springer, 2011), and Migration, Gender and Social
Justice (Springer, 2014). His monograph on The Ethics of Development was
published by Edinburgh University Press (2004) and Sage India (2005).
Much of his research in the past decade has been on the ethics and policy
discourses around climate change.
 Notes on Editor and Contributors 
   xxi

Shanti George is an independent scholar based in The Hague, the

Netherlands. She was previously Reader in Sociology at the University of
Delhi and a research fellow at the Centre for Social Studies in Surat, and
taught at the University of Zimbabwe and the Institute of Social Studies,
The Hague. She has worked extensively too in West Asia and North Africa.
Her main work is on determinants and promotion of child and youth well-
being, but she retains a strong interest in international and cosmopolitan
education, on which she has published two books: Third World Professionals
and Development Education in Europe—Personal Narratives, Global
Conversations (Sage, 1997) and Re-Imagined Universities and Global
Citizen Professionals (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

Hans-Herbert Kögler is Professor of Philosophy at the University of

North Florida, Jacksonville, and a regular guest professor at Alpen Adria
University, Klagenfurt, Austria. His major publications include The Power
of Dialogue: Critical Hermeneutics after Gadamer and Foucault (1999);
Michel Foucault (2nd ed., 2004); Kultura, Kritika, Dialog (Prague,
2006); the co-edited volume Empathy and Agency: The Problem of
Understanding in the Human Sciences (2000); Social Epistemology (1997),
special issue for ‘Alienation as Epistemological Source: Reflexivity and
Social Background after Mannheim and Bourdieu’; numerous essays on
hermeneutics, critical theory, and normative grounds of the social sci-
ences. His recent work focuses beyond those themes, especially on a her-
meneutic theory of agency, intercultural dialogue, as well as
cosmopolitanism.

Reinhart Kössler Professor of Political Science (Freiburg), born 1949 in

Karlsruhe, Germany; PhD (Sociology) 1978, senior PhD 1987, taught at
a number of German and international universities, Director of Arnold
Bergstraesser Institute, Freiburg (2013–2015), now retired, lives in Berlin,
Germany. He is also a visiting professor and a research associate, Institute
of Reconciliation and Social Justice, the University of the Free State,
South Africa. His fields of interest are social and development theory,
political sociology, ethnicity, and memory politics, with regional focus on
Southern Africa. His selected books are Despotie in der Moderne, 1993;
Chancen internationaler Zivilgesellschaft (Perspectives of International
Civil Society, with Henning Melber), 1993; Postkoloniale Staaten
(Postcolonial States), 1994. Entwicklung (Development), 1998; Globale
Solidarität? (Global Solidarity? with Henning Melber), 2002; In Search of
xxii Notes on Editor and Contributors

Survival and Dignity. Two Traditional Communities in Southern Namibia

Under South African Rule, 2005; Understanding Change. Methods,
Methodologies and Metaphors (ed. with Andreas Wimmer), 2006; The Long
Aftermath of War. Reconciliation and Transition in Namibia (ed. with
André du Pisani and William A. Lindeke), 2010; Gesellschaft bei Marx
(Society in Marx, with Hanns Wienold), 2nd ed. 2013; Namibia and
Germany. Negotiating the Past, 2015; Völkermord—und was dann? Die
Politik deutsch-namibischer Vergangenheitsbearbeitung (Genocide—Which
Consequences? German-Namibian Memory Politics, with Henning
Melber), 2017.

Karl-Heinz Pohl is an emeritus professor at Trier University, Germany,

and has a PhD in East Asian Studies from the University of Toronto. He
has taught at Tuebingen and Trier Universities and has research interests
in aesthetics and ethics of modern and pre-modern China, pre-modern
Chinese literature and literary theory, cross-cultural dialogue and com-
munication between China and the West. His publications include an
edited volume titled Chinese Thought in a Global Context: A Dialogue
Between Chinese and Western Philosophical Approaches (1999), Chinese
Ethics in a Global Context: Moral Bases of Contemporary Societies with
Anselm W. Mueller (2002) and (in German) Aesthetics and Literary Theory
in China—From Tradition Till Modernity (2007).

Anjana Raghavan is Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Department of

Psychology, Sociology, and Politics at Sheffield Hallam University,
UK. She works in the interstices of postcolonial feminism, and decolonial
social theory, with a focus on race, gender and sexuality. Her more recent
research interests are around discourses of love, belonging and their every-
day practices and politics. Raghavan has a chapter in the edited anthology
Becoming Minority: How Discourses and Policies Produce Minorities in
Europe and India (Sage: 2014). Her monograph entitled Towards
Corporeal Cosmopolitanism: Performing Decolonial Solidarities (Rowman
and Littlefield International) is in the offing.

Barbara Riedel born in 1950, studied Social and Cultural Anthropology,

Philosophy and Archaeology at the University of Freiburg. For her PhD
thesis, she did a field study with Muslim students in Calicut (Kozhikode)
in Kerala, South India between 2004 and 2007. Barbara Riedel was
Co-Director of the project “Universality and acceptance potential of social
 Notes on Editor and Contributors 
   xxiii

science knowledge” between 2013 and 2014 at the Institute of Sociology

at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Since then she has been working
on biographical research projects in the area of entangled histories of
Germany/India. She focuses in her work on Islam on the Balkan Peninsula,
in Central and South Asia, on trade and circulation of knowledge between
Europe, the Near East, Central and South Asia. Her further interests are
globalization, cosmopolitanism, the history of Christian missionaries and
hermeneutics.

Boike Rehbein is Professor of the Sociology of Asia and Africa at

Humboldt University of Berlin. He studied philosophy, sociology and his-
tory at Paris, Goettingen, Frankfurt, Berlin and Freiburg, where he
received his PhD in 1996 and ‘habilitation’. He was acting chair of sociol-
ogy at Freiburg from 2004 to 2006 and director of the Global Studies
Programme from 2006 before moving to Berlin in 2009. His areas of
specialization are social theory, globalization, social inequality and main-
land Southeast Asia. His recent books in English include Globalization,
Culture and Society in Laos (2007; paperback 2010); Globalization and
Emerging Societies (ed. with Jan Nederveen Pieterse; Palgrave Macmillan
2009; paperback 2011); Globalization and Inequality in Emerging Societies
(Palgrave Macmillan 2011); Critical Theory after the Rise of the Global
South (2015; translated from German).

Ulrich Rösch (1951–2014) was born on 14 January 1951 in Efringen-

Kirchen (DE). After graduating from a school of economics, he followed
with studies in German, pedagogy and social science. In 1968, in the mar-
ket square in Lörrach, he met Wilfried Heidt, who told him about the
threefold social organism of Rudolf Steiner. After the founding of the
International Cultural Center in Achberg in 1971, Ulrich Rösch worked
in its Institute for Social Research and Developmental Principles, working
along with Joseph Beuys, Wilfried Heidt, Leif Holbaek-Hansen, Eugen
Löbl, Ota Sik and Wilhelm Schmundt, the latter being like a mentor for
him. In 1976, he founded, with the support of Stefan Leber and Manfred
Leist, the Free Waldorf School Wangen in Allgäu, where he worked as a
teacher and administrator. From 1999 to 2011, Ulrich Rösch was active in
the Section for Social Sciences at the Goetheanum. He was a close
co-worker with Manfred Schmidt-Brabant, the former section’s leader.
Later, Ulrich Rösch coordinated many conferences and was a sought-after
speaker, also in Asian countries. He passed away on 14 February 2014.
xxiv Notes on Editor and Contributors

Sylvie Octobre is a researcher at the Department of Studies, Statistics

and Forecast of the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, and
an associate research fellow at GEMASS (CNRS/Paris Sorbonne). Her
research interests focus on cultural participation, generational shift in cul-
tural consumption and socialisation, particularly from a gendered and glo-
balised perspective. Her latest books are Question de genre, questions de
culture (La documentation Française, 2014); Deux pouces et des neurones:
les cultures juvéniles de l’ère médiatique à l’ère numérique (La documenta-
tion Française, 2014); (with R. Sirota, ed.) L’enfant et ses cultures, approches
internationales (La documentation Française, 2013); (with C. Detrez,
P. Mercklé, and N. Berthomier, eds.) L’enfance des loisirs: trajectoires com-
munes et parcours individuels de la fin de l’enfance à la grande adolescence
(La documentation Française, 2010).

Scott Schaffer is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of

Western Ontario in London, Canada, where he specialises in c­ ontemporary
and global social theory, social ethics, social change, and development. He
is the author of Resisting Ethics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) and has con-
tributed to recent collections of works on cosmopolitanising cosmopoli-
tanism and public sociology.

Liz Sutherland originally from Ottawa, Canada, currently resides in

Toronto. She is a policy advisor at the Ontario Nonprofit Network, where
she advocates for an enabling public policy environment to grow the soli-
darity economy. She is highly engaged in the vita activa and remains pro-
foundly influenced by her political theory training, in particular the
writings of Hannah Arendt. Liz has a BA (Hons) from Trent University
(Peterborough, Ontario) and an MA from the University of Victoria
(British Columbia).

Piet Strydom originally an ethical exile from the apartheid regime, is since
2011 a retired member of the School of Sociology and Philosophy,
University College Cork, Ireland. He is an associate editor of the European
Journal of Social Theory. Besides many articles, some well noted, in journals,
anthologies and encyclopaedias, major publications include Contemporary
Critical Theory and Methodology (2011), New Horizons of Critical Theory:
Collective Learning and Triple Contingency (2009), Risk, Environment and
Society (2002), and Discourse and Knowledge (2000). He edited Philosophies
of Social Science (2003, with Gerard Delanty) as well as special issues of the
European Journal of Social Theory and the Irish Journal of Sociology.
 Notes on Editor and Contributors 
   xxv

Jyotirmaya Tripathy is in the faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India. His research interest
are in the areas of postcolonial criticism, cultural development thought,
and contemporary India, and he has published in these domains in jour-
nals like Journal of Cultural Economy, Development in Practice, Social
Semiotics, Journal of Developing Societies, International Journal of Cultural
Studies, and Journal of Global South Studies, among others. He is also the
editor of Becoming Minority: How Discourses and Policies Produce Minorities
in Europe and India (2014) and The Democratic Predicament: Cultural
Diversity in India and Europe (2013). He has worked on EU-funded proj-
ects in collaboration with various European universities.

Pnina Werbner is Professor Emerita in Social Anthropology at Keele

University. She is an urban anthropologist who has studied Muslim South
Asians in Britain and Pakistan and, more recently, the women’s movement
and the Manual Workers Union in Botswana funded by the ESRC pro-
gramme on Non-governmental Public Action and the Wenner-Gren
Foundation for Anthropological Research. Her study in Botswana has led
to her most recent monograph, The Making of an African Working Class
and to a major edited book on the Political Aesthetics of Global Protest,
both in 2014. In 2015, she was awarded a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship
to study ‘The Changing Kgotla: The Transformation of Customary Courts
in Village Botswana.’ She has also been, since 2008, the principal investi-
gator of two major projects: ‘New African Migrants in the Gateway City:
Ethnicity, Religion, Citizenship’ (ESRC) and ‘In the Footsteps of Jesus
and the Prophet: Sociality, Caring and the Religious Imagination in the
Filipino Diaspora’ (AHRC). She has been the co-editor of the prestigious
‘Postcolonial Encounters’ series published by Zed Books (distributed by
Palgrave in the USA), and in addition, she organises the annual Pakistan
Workshop at Satterthwaite. Her two books, Imagined Diasporas Among
Manchester Muslims and Pilgrims of Love, along with The Migration Process,
make up the Manchester Migration Trilogy, a series of three single-
authored books tracing the processes of Pakistani migration, community
formation, religious transnationalism and diaspora over a period of 50
years. The series as a whole interrogates the translocation of culture—its
dislocation, transplantation and translation in the course of migration.
Collectively, the three books form the most comprehensive body of eth-
nography about any immigrant community in Britain.
 List of Figure

Fig. 4.1 Spheres of belonging 63

xxvii
 CHAPTER 1

Beyond Cosmopolitanism: An Invitation

to Adventure of Ideas and Multiverse
of Transformations

Ananta Kumar Giri

Cosmopolitanism is an epochal challenge of our times in thought and

practice. But the current discourses of it, like many discourses of our times,
are primarily Euro-American and parochial. In this context, Beyond
Cosmopolitanism: Towards Planetary Transformations presents us probably
for the first time a globally embracing view of cosmopolitanism building
upon multiple traditions of humanity. It goes beyond the dominant
Eurocentric conception of cosmopolitanism which traces its roots to
Greek Stoic and Kantian heritages as citizen of the world and engages
itself with multiple trajectories and conceptions of being cosmopolitan in
our world such as in the Indic traditions where to be cosmopolitan is to
realize oneself as a member of the family of Earth—Vasudhaiva
Kutumbakam and in the Chinese tradition being one and all under
heaven—Tian Xia. Beyond Cosmopolitanism: Towards Planetary
Transformations goes beyond East and West, North and South and offers
planetary conversations about cosmopolitization, bringing together the
thoughts of Confucius, Buddha, Kant, Steiner, Gandhi, Tolstoy, Habermas,

A.K. Giri (*)

Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India

© The Author(s) 2018 1

A.K. Giri (ed.), Beyond Cosmopolitanism,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-5376-4_1
2 A.K. GIRI

Nussbaum and many others. It also presents a complex history of cosmo-

politanism and its entanglement with colonialism and contemporary
structures of inequality.
The volume has three parts. Part I, “Cosmopolitanism and Beyond:
Alternative Pathways of Explorations and Experimentations”, begins with
the chapter “Cosmopolitanism and Beyond: Towards Planetary
Realizations” by Ananta Kumar Giri in which he discusses the limits of
contemporary dominant conceptions of cosmopolitanism coming from
scholars such as K. Anthony Appiah and Martha Nussbaum. He traces this
to their confinement within a narrow lineage of cosmopolitanism starting
from the Greek stoics such as Diogenes to modern and contemporary
thinkers such as Immanuel Kant and Jurgen Habermas. Giri discusses
multiple traditions of cosmopolitanism in histories and contemporary
thinking. He discusses about the need to bring the notion of cosmopoli-
tanism as citizen of the world and member of the family of Mother Earth
together in creative, critical and transformative ways. This also finds a reso-
nance in the contribution of Vittorio Cotesta, who presents us the per-
spective of Chinese thinker Tingyang for bringing the Greek concept of
agora and the Confucian concept of Tian Xia—“all under sky”—together.
As Cotesta tells us in this volume, “[t]he merging of these two cultural
traditions may lead to institutions capable of giving peace and harmony to
the world.” Bringing these three traditions—Chinese, Indian and Greek—
we can simultaneously cultivate agora, all under sky and Vasudhaiva
Kutumbakam (the whole world is a family) for realization of an expanding
and concentric circle of cosmopolitanism.
In his contribution, Giri also points to the need to understand global
justice movements as bearers of cosmopolitan responsibility—a theme
which resonates in many other contributions of the volume. Along with the
need for cultivating dialogues across borders, cultures and civilizations, and
cultivating planetary conversations, Giri also urges us to realize the spiritual
dimension in cosmopolitanism. The subsequent contribution of John
Clammer, “Cosmopolitanism Beyond Anthropocentrism: The Ecological
Self and Transcivilizational Dialogues,” resonates with this urge to go
beyond the dominant conception of cosmopolitanism, especially anthropo-
centrism. For this, Clammer presents ecological self as a bearer of cosmo-
politanism. This ecological self is based upon the realization that

it is possible and indeed imperative to formulate a notion of human identity

that is based not on ‘difference’ (a notion that has pervaded much of social
 BEYOND COSMOPOLITANISM: AN INVITATION TO ADVENTURE OF IDEAS... 3

theory in the recent past), but on the continuity between humans and
nature, a continuity that is shared by all human beings regardless of culture
or nationality, and hence of a sense of planetary identity both in the sense of
human existential unity and of communion with the rest of nature, with the
other bioforms and other geographical, geological and atmospheric circum-
stances which are the context and requirements of our lives and are essential
not only to our physical survival (that should be fairly obvious), but also to
our psychic, aesthetic, and moral survival.

Clammer argues that the ecological self goes beyond the subject-object
dichotomy of modernist self and is non-­subjectivist which “creates a com-
munal, even cosmic, sense of identity and interconnectedness that tran-
scends the limits of language and its endless discursive formations in favour
of experience which while not entirely unmediated, certainly produces a
sense of non-duality rarely available through cognitive and linguistic
processes.”
Clammer’s chapter is followed by Gina Brock’s “Nonlinear Belonging
as a Creative Companion to Cosmopolitan Realisation: Creative Memory
Work and Reimagining the Relationship Between Xenia and Hestia,” in
which Brock brings us to roots of cosmopolitanism in the vision and prac-
tice of hestia which promoted open cosmopolitan belonging as different
from xenia. In her words, “A hestia-centric mentality shifts the under-
standing of self as ‘a citizen of the world’ to a realisation of self as a mem-
ber of the human family and promotes cooperation and compassion over
competition and domination.” With these creative memory works and
journey across traditions, we are ready to walk with the insightful reflec-
tions on cosmopolitanism offered by Piet Strydom, a deeply insightful
thinker and theorist of our times. In his chapter, “Cosmopolitanism, the
Cognitive Order of Modernity, and Conflicting Models of World
Openness: On the Prospects of Collective Learning,” Strydom tells us:
“Whereas the development of society is the objective multilevel process of
the opening up and globalisation of the economic, political, social, legal
and cultural forms of society, cosmopolitanism is the internally experi-
enced sense of the openness of social relations and society which is carried
by collective learning processes. However, learning depends on competi-
tion, contestation and conflict between social actors who take for granted
and share the cognitive order, including the idea of cosmopolitanism, but
interpret it according to different values, act upon it in terms of different
norms and therefore try to realise it in contrary ways.”
4 A.K. GIRI

Strydom insightfully charts new paths of cosmopolitanism as paths of

creative learning and brings a critical social science perspective to this.
Boike Rehbein, a fellow creative sociologist and philosopher, also follows
this lead in the subsequent chapter, “Cosmopolitanism and Understanding
in the Social Sciences.” Rehbein here strives to cultivate a new path of
understanding which is required to live creatively and meaningfully in our
contemporary world, what he calls existential understanding. For Rehbein,
“[t]he object of existential understanding is an aspect of another human
being’s life” and this “should form the core of any cosmopolitanism.”
Existential understanding combines both hermeneutic understanding,
where understanding deals with texts and is primarily textual, and practical
understanding. Such an existential understanding involves a new herme-
neutics of self, culture and the world what can be called multi-topial
hermeneutics. In multi-topial hermeneutics, one moves across multiple
topoi, terrains and traditions of thinking.1 The following chapters by Pohl
and Röss reflect such an existential understanding and multi-topial
­hermeneutics as it involves border-crossing walk and mediation across tra-
ditions. Rehbein’s chapter is followed by the contribution of Karl-Heinz
Pohl on the Confucian tradition of cosmopolitan ethics. For Pohl,

Confucianism has some traits that are by its very nature ‘cosmopolitan’: First
of all, the Confucian concern is for ‘all under Heaven’ (tian-xia), that is, ‘to
take everything under Heaven as one’s responsibility.’ This is its all inclusive
scope. Second, the ‘authentic’ person, the one who has realized his or her
‘great self’ through self-cultivation, ‘can assist the transforming and nour-
ishing powers of Heaven and Earth,’ leading to global peace—one could
muse about the positive effects this teaching could have on the leaders of
today’s world super-powers. And lastly, the notion of the ‘unity of Heaven
and man’—interpreted by the Boston Confucianists (Tu Weiming, for
example) in a contemporary way as an ecological ‘unity of nature and
man’—would have far reaching implications if it could be put into political
currency. Seen from this perspective, we have here a vision of a united man-
kind that should not make us feel uneasy anymore. One could truly call it an
ethics of cosmopolitanism—not by force but by choice.

Pohl’s journey with Confucianism finds a resonance in Ulrich Röss’s

walking and meditation with Rudolf Steiner and Mahatma Gandhi in
search of new horizons of cosmopolitanism, spirituality and social action.
In his chapter, “Cosmopolitanism, Spirituality and Social Action: Mahatma
Gandhi and Rudolf Steiner,” Röss tells us how both Steiner and Gandhi
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
out. She tried a second time, but with no better success. How in the
world did her mother manage to do it so easily?
She stood looking at it, puzzled what to do next, then she
remembered that some chips and light kindling must go in on top of
the paper. She tried to get off some little slivers, and by so doing
managed first to get a splinter in her forefinger and then to cut a
gash in her thumb. She was ready to cry, and indeed the tears were
standing in her eyes, for the time was going and Jerry would be at
home very soon. She could not bear to confess to him that she could
not make fire, for Jerry, like all boys, was ready to tease. So she took
off the lids again to make a last effort.
Just then there was a knock at the door, and when it was opened
there stood Rock Hardy.
“I came to tell you that your mother will not be home till late,” he
told Cassy. He caught sight of her thumb tied up with a rag. “Why,
what a woebegone little face,” he said, “and your finger is bleeding.
What have you been doing to yourself?”
“I’ve been trying to make a fire and it won’t burn.” Cassy’s voice
was full of tears. “And I can’t get this splinter out, and I cut myself
trying to make kindling.”
“You poor little girl! you have had trouble of your own. Here, let me
see. I’ll get that splinter out, and tie up that thumb properly, and
make the fire, too. Are you here all alone?”
“Yes, you know Jerry has his market errands to do, and I wanted
to have dinner ready by the time he came.”
“Poor little girl,” Rock repeated. “First get me a fine needle and I’ll
see about that splinter. I will try not to hurt you.”
Cassy was very brave and stood quite still while Rock probed for
the splinter which had gone in quite deep, but at last he triumphantly
produced it sticking on the end of the needle, and after tying up her
cut thumb, he tipped back her chin and looked into her eyes in which
the tears were standing. She smiled and tried to wink away the
drops.
 “You were a real soldier,” Rock told her, “and I know it hurt like
everything when I had to dig down after that splinter. Now for the fire.
What’s wrong? Why, you haven’t opened any of the drafts. See, you
must pull out this one, and open this thing in front; that will make a
blaze. Now, there she goes. What are you going to cook?”
Cassy looked down a little abashed.
“I wasn’t going to cook anything. I was just going to warm up this
stew and the corn-bread. You see mother didn’t expect to be gone so
long and she didn’t know we wouldn’t have anything else for dinner.”
She made her little excuses haltingly.
Rock was silent for a moment. It seemed like such a poor little
dinner to the boy accustomed to a lavish table.
“I wish you would invite me to dinner,” at last he said very gravely.
Cassy cast a startled look at the remnant of stew. There would be
enough corn-bread, but she knew Jerry’s appetite, and if Rock’s
were anything like it, some one would have to go hungry from the
table. But she said shyly, “Won’t you stay and take dinner with us?
Jerry will be glad to have you.”
“And how about Cassy?”
The child cast another glance at the little supply of food and Rock
smiled.
“I can make jolly good chocolate,” he said, “and I am going to have
some. Do you mind if we make a sort of picnic of this and let every
fellow bring his own basket? I think it would be a great lark to do
that.”
That seemed an easy way out of it, and Cassy, much relieved,
nodded and smiled. It suited her exactly to call it a picnic.
“You see,” Rock went on, “they’re talking over your mother’s affairs
at our house, and father’s lawyer is there, and so you see it is no fun
for me, and they’ll be glad to get me out of the way. So, if you will
invite me to your picnic, I should like it of all things.”
 “Oh, I do invite you, and here are the rocks, and over there by the
window can be the woods, there, where the flowers are.”
Rock laughed.
“You have an imagination of your own,” he said. “All right. I am
going to shut up some of these drafts so the fire won’t all burn out. I’ll
be back directly.” He went flying out and Cassy heard him going
down the stairs, two or three steps at a time. Then she turned to her
work of setting the table.
“We are going to have a picnic, Flora,” she said. “Isn’t it fun? Won’t
Jerry be surprised? I must go into the other room and tell Miss
Morning-Glory that she can stay to dinner. I was afraid there wasn’t
going to be enough for her and all of us, too.”
She bustled about and had everything in readiness by the time
Rock returned. He carried a basket which he set down on the chest.
 “Cassy’s Eyes Opened Wider and Wider”

“Now then,” he said, “let’s see if we are all right. There’s the milk
for the chocolate,” producing a bottle; “here are some sardines.
What’s this? Oh, yes, the chocolate. Here’s a box of strawberries;
they looked tempting; you can cap them while I make the chocolate.
What is in this bag? I forget. Oh, yes, that’s sugar, and this is cake
and biscuits and stuff. Nobody ever heard of a picnic without cake. I
borrowed the basket from the grocer at the corner.”
Cassy’s eyes opened wider and wider while all this abundance
was displayed, but she made her protest.
“But you have brought so much; it is more than your share.”
“I don’t think so, but if I have, you will have to excuse me, for I am
a new hand at marketing. Besides, you furnish the picnic grounds; all
these rocks and that grove over there, and the fire and the dishes. I
think when you come to look at it that I have furnished the least.”
Which statement satisfied Cassy, who went to work to cap the
strawberries while Rock set the milk to boil for the chocolate.
They were in the midst of these performances when Jerry came in.
“Hallo!” he cried, as he saw this unusual state of affairs. “Where’s
mother?”
“She is at our house,” replied Rock, “or at least she was. I left her
there, and father was talking for all he was worth to the lawyer, so I
reckon they will enter that suit, and I do hope you will win.”
“Oh,” exclaimed Cassy. “I forgot to ask you if you knew anything
about it; we thought that was what mother was going for.”
“Yes, I asked father, and he said it was too early to tell yet but
there was a good prospect of your getting something. I say, old
fellow,” he gave Jerry a friendly slap on the back, “I have invited
myself to a picnic lunch to celebrate the event. They are glad to have
me out of the way on this occasion and Cassy was so good as to ask
me to stay and dine with you.” He gave Cassy an amused look as he
spoke and she looked down, remembering how very unready she
was to invite him.
“My, that’s a jolly good feed,” cried Jerry, his eyes roaming over
the table. “I am as hungry as a bear.”
“I’m glad of that,” said Rock, “for I am too. I could eat every
mouthful of that stew.”
 “I wish you would,” said Jerry, frankly. “I’m tired of it; I’d a lot rather
have the sardines.”
“All right, it’s a go,” said Rock. “I hope you don’t want any, Cassy.
Wouldn’t you rather have the sardines, too? then I can have all the
stew.”
Cassy confessed that she would rather, and Rock drew the dish of
stew to his side of the table.
“Did you have a good day, Jerry?” Cassy asked.
“Not very; I only made thirty cents.”
Rock looked at him. “To think of this little fellow helping to support
his family,” was his thought, and he gave Jerry an admiring glance.
“That’s more than I ever earned in one day,” he said, soberly.
“Oh, but you don’t have to,” Jerry replied. “I reckon I wouldn’t
either, if I were you.”
“Never mind, old fellow,” Rock went on, “you’ll be twice the man for
it. I tell you when a fellow shows what he is willing to do and that he
isn’t going to shirk, it goes a great way. John McClure told father
about your insisting upon doing something to pay for that little
measly geranium you got for Cassy, and ever since then father’s
been keen to see to this business of your mother’s. John McClure is
a fine man. Father says he is one of the most intelligent fellows he
knows. He is a Scotchman by birth and is well educated, but he had
some trouble with his people at home and came to America to make
his living any way that he could. He’d always been fond of
gardening, so he applied for the place as gardener with us, and has
been there ever since we’ve lived here. I believe he will come into
some property some day, and we’ll be sorry to part with him, I tell
you.”
“I just love him,” said Cassy.
“I think he’s a brick,” said Jerry. “Haven’t you always lived in that
house?”
 “No, indeed, only for a few years. It really belongs to old Mr.
Dallas, but he and his wife are obliged to go south every year, and
so when my mother and Mr. Heath Dallas were married, his father
wanted them to take the place and keep it from running down. So
that suited everybody, and we’ve been living there two years. Mother
loves it and so do I, and I believe John McClure does, too.”
“I should think he would,” Cassy remarked fervently.
“Father would like to build a little house in the corner of the garden
for John, but he says, no, he has no one to keep house for him and
that some day he will have a place of his own; I think he means to be
a florist and have greenhouses and such things; he reads about
gardens and plants, and all that sort of thing, all the time.”
“I should think that would be the finest business,” said Jerry. “I tell
you flowers sell for a big price sometimes.”
“I know they do, especially in midwinter. Anyhow everything John
puts in the ground seems to grow, and I should think he’d make a
success of that business, for he’s what father calls a ‘canny Scot,’
though he’s not a bit stingy. By the way, I heard my father ask if you
had any relatives; I suppose you haven’t, have you?”
“No,” Jerry told him, “at least not very near ones. Father had no
brothers or sisters, and mother’s people lived in England. Her father
and mother died when she was little, and she came over here with
her aunt.”
“Oh, I see,” said Rock. He had wondered why Mrs. Law had been
left with no one to give her a helping hand.
THE SUMMER LONG
 CHAPTER VIII
THE SUMMER LONG

Having satisfied his appetite to the point of discomfort, Jerry

pushed back his plate with a sigh, shaking his head when Cassy
asked if he would have more strawberries.
“Then we’ll save them and the rest of the things for mother,” she
said with a satisfied air. “Unless,” she looked at Rock with sudden
misgiving, “unless you meant to carry them home.”
Rock laughed.
“Not I, if you please. I’ve no notion of doing any such thing. I am
too lazy to move and the thought of having to burden myself with a
basket is too much for me. I will help you to wipe the dishes, though,
and Jerry can put them away.”
“Do you really mean,” said Jerry, slowly, having been in a brown
study, “that the railroad people will pay mother some money?”
“I think so,” Rock told him, “but one can’t say positively. Father
says it is a very good case for damages, but it has been so long now
that perhaps they will not want to pay the whole amount that is
claimed, but he is pretty sure they will compromise, and he knows
what he’s talking about.”
Cassy did not exactly understand all this, but she knew it meant
good fortune for her mother; that hope of which she had spoken on
Easter Day, and she wondered if it could mean as much as that they
could have a cottage with morning-glories over the porch, and if they
could move away and be rid of Billy Miles forever.
As if in answer to her thought Rock asked her: “Have you seen
anything of our friend Billy Miles lately?”
“Our friend,” Cassy repeated in scorn. “I’d like to see myself calling
him my friend.”
 “Well, you’ll get rid of him soon, I hope,” Rock told her.
“Do you really think so?” Cassy exclaimed. “I hope we shall, and,
oh, I’d like to get rid of a good many things.”
“What, for instance?”
“Oh, most of the schoolgirls, and this horrid noisy street and Mrs.
Boyle’s parrot. I wish I could go to another school and move into
another street, and never see the parrot again.”
“Why, don’t you like the parrot? I think she is very funny.”
Cassy shook her head.
“She is a bad bird, and says things in such a wicked way like old
Mrs. Finnegan, and they laugh just alike. Polly bites, too, and is so
cross. Sometimes I sit on the fence and look at her and she looks at
me and says: ‘You’re bad! You’re bad!’ and I say, ‘I am not as bad as
you. You are bad!’ And then she laughs as if she liked to be bad. I
believe she has a black heart,” Cassy concluded, soberly.
Rock laughed.
“The poor Polly! I don’t believe she is as wicked as you make out,
but I’ve no doubt but by this time next year you will be far away from
here.”
“Oh, let’s pretend we will,” cried Cassy, stopping in her work of
clearing off the dishes. “You say what you think we’ll be doing, and
I’ll say, and Jerry can.”
“That reminds me of a play we have sometimes, where one begins
a story and one after another goes on with it till it is very funny by the
time it is finished. Here goes: Next year at this time you will be living
in a pretty little country town.”
“Where?” asked Cassy, fishing with a fork for the soap in her pan
of hot water.
“Why, of course in the same town where Eleanor lives.”
“How lovely! Go on.”
“And you’ll live in a nice little white cottage——”
 “With morning-glories over the porch.”
“Yes, and roses. I think I know just where it is.”
“Oh, I wish I did!” Cassy dropped her mop and clasped her soapy
hands.
“And you’ll have a dog and a cat.”
“And chickens,” Jerry broke in.
“And a garden,” Cassy added, eagerly.
“And pigeons, maybe,” from Jerry.
“And we’ll have picnics whenever we want them,” Rock went on.
“We?”
“Yes; you’re not going to leave me out. I go up there every
summer, if you please.”
“Oh, do you?”
“That’s fine,” said Jerry. “Oh, pshaw! I almost thought it was going
to be really. Cass, where shall I put the milk?”
“On the window ledge, outside; it is cooler there than anywhere
else.”
“Gee whiz!” exclaimed Rock, looking at his watch. “It’s after three
and I promised George Reed that I’d be there by half-past. I must
travel. Good-bye, Cassy. Good-bye, Jerry; I’ve had a bang up time.”
He lost no time in getting away, gazed after admiringly by both the
children, Jerry declaring that he was “hot stuff,” and Cassy saying: “I
think he’s like a real Prince of Wales.”
It was late when their mother returned, tired out, and after Cassy
had bustled around and had set before her the remains of the feast,
she told them that so far all seemed very promising, but that such
matters could not be settled at once. Yet Cassy saw that there was a
brighter smile on her mother’s face and that she did not turn at once
to that hateful pile of sewing.
 Yet true it was that before midsummer they had all seen the last of
the noisy street, and had turned their backs upon Billy Miles, Mrs.
Boyle and the wicked parrot, for about the first of July, just as Cassy
and Jerry were mourning the fact that the Dallas family would soon
be going away, and their house would be closed, there came a call
from Mrs. Dallas herself which resulted in a most delightful
arrangement.
“We are going to leave the city for the summer,” she said to Mrs.
Law, “and although heretofore we have always shut up the house,
yet this year Mr. Dallas will have to be here more or less, and it
would be so much more comfortable for him if he could come to his
own home when he is obliged to be in the city; so I have been
thinking how very nice it would be if you would consent to take
charge of the house during the summer months. I had thought of
renting it, but we should feel so much better satisfied to have some
one we know in it, and if you would kindly see that Mr. Dallas is
made comfortable when he comes to town, I should feel that we
would be quits in the matter of rent. John McClure has consented to
sleep in the coachman’s quarters at the stable; we take our horses
with us, you know, and I think John would be mightily pleased if you
would board him; it might help out with your table expenses if you
could do that. The back rooms are really the most agreeable in
summer, for they look out on the garden, and the porch at that side is
very cool. We always find a breeze there, if there is any stirring. Do
you think you could arrange to come?”
Mrs. Law glanced at Cassy, who was looking thin and pale.
“Oh, mother!” cried the child in an imploring tone.
“You would like it, wouldn’t you, Cassy?” said Mrs. Dallas, smiling
at her.
“Better than anything,” said Cassy.
“I know it is a responsibility,” Mrs. Dallas went on, “and that one
always feels more or less uneasy if he or she is given charge of
another’s belongings, but you need use only the rooms at the back
of the house, and I am sure everything will be in much better
condition than if the house were left closed. Mr. Dallas will only sleep
there when he is in town, so you will not have to think of meals for
him, and, oh yes, whenever you think there is need of extra cleaning
you are at liberty to call upon Martha Collins; I think you may need
her once in a while. She understands that, for she is paid half her
wages while we are away, and it is an understood thing that she
holds herself in readiness to do anything we exact of her. John will
see to it that the pavements are kept clean; there is a boy who
comes to do that. John says he wouldn’t agree to having any other
children in and out of his garden, so you and Jerry may consider
yourselves complimented,” she said, turning to Cassy.
The upshot of the whole matter was that Mrs. Law agreed to
accept Mrs. Dallas’s offer, and in a few days the Law family found a
summer home at the old Dallas place, with John as their boarder.
Cassy could scarcely believe her ears that first morning when she
was awakened by the robins whistling in the cherry-trees, early, so
early, before any one was up. She had a little room next her
mother’s; both rooms opened on a porch and overlooked the garden.
Cassy slipped out of bed and tiptoed to the window. She could see
the robins getting their share of the cherries before any one else
should gather them, and then her eyes fell upon a wonderful sight
just under her window. Those were morning-glories surely, blue and
pink and purple and pearly white, opening now as the light touched
them.
“Oh!” whispered the child in ecstasy. “You darlings!” She reached
out her hand and drew a bit of the vine towards her, gazing into the
frail cups and touching with gentle finger the curling tendrils.
She was so happy that her eyes filled with tears, and she stood
there whispering to herself till she heard her mother stir, and then
she scampered back to bed again, but not to sleep; the robins were
too lively, and when in the course of an hour she heard the click of a
grass-mower in the garden, she jumped up and dressed herself,
then groped her way down-stairs and let herself out the door into the
morning sunshine.
 “Hello!” cried John, looking up from his grass-cutting. “You are an
early bird.”
“I’m not as early as the robins.”
“No, you’d have to get up betimes to get ahead of them, little
robbers that they are.”
“Aren’t there enough cherries for them to have some?” Cassy
asked anxiously.
John smiled.
“That depends upon how many you want for yourself. Do you like
cherries?”
Cassy thought for a minute.
“I don’t believe I ever tasted any. Mother didn’t think they were
good for us, and she never let us eat them.”
“Well, I declare,” said John. “But I don’t blame her. I doubt if any
you ever saw were fit to eat. There is a muckle of difference between
cherries picked right off the tree and those you see on the fruit stand
at your corner. As soon as I get through this lawn I’ll get you some.
By to-morrow they ought to be picked, anyhow.”
Cassy looked up at the red and white waxy fruit. She thought it
looked very pretty among the green leaves.
“What a good time the robins were having, to be sure.” She
thought it might be great fun to be a robin and go flying, flying among
the trees. They did seem to be enjoying themselves so much that the
little girl felt sorry that the cherries must be picked, and they be left
without any, but she remembered that the cherries would not last
very long anyhow, and that the robins would have their share first.
Up and down the lawn John went, while Cassy sat on the step and
watched him and the robins, and gazed at the garden before her.
The best of the blossoming was over, but there were a number of
flowers still to be seen; marigolds, and larkspurs, and snap-dragons,
phlox and mignonette and monthly roses, not to mention the
geraniums. Every time John came to the end of his line he would
stop to have a pleasant word, and although he declared that he
wasn’t getting along very fast, it was evident that he enjoyed Cassy’s
company.
After a while the grass was cut and lay in sweet smelling heaps
upon the lawn.
“That will make quite a little pile of hay,” said John, “and there’s
nothing smells sweeter. Come along now and we’ll get those
cherries.”
Bringing a ladder he placed it against the tree and soon had
climbed within reach of the fruit-laden branches. He tossed a cluster
down to Cassy.
“Try ’em,” he said.
Cassy immediately popped one into her mouth.
“Like that? Pretty good, isn’t it?”
“It’s delicious,” Cassy returned.
“Think you’d like to come up here and pick some for yourself?
Afraid to try the ladder? It’s pretty steady.”
“I’d love to do that.”
“Come along, then.” John settled himself into a crotch of the tree
and watched her ascend. She came lightly and with perfect
confidence. “That’s right,” he said. “You weren’t a bit scared, were
you?”
“No, indeed.”
He put out his arm and drew her to a safe seat near him. “There
now, help yourself,” he told her. “You can run a race with the robins if
you like.”
Cassy laughed, and then for the first time in all her life she
gathered fruit from its own tree. After awhile she saw that her mother
had come down and that Jerry was looking for her. She gave a merry
glance at John.
“Don’t tell him where we are; let him find us.”
 “Cassy, Cassy,” called Jerry.
“Here I am,” came the answer.
Jerry looked mystified. He hunted the garden over, and finally
spied the ladder leaning against the tree.
“Oho!” he cried peering up into the green; and just then a bunch of
ripe cherries came pelting against his upturned face and a merry
laugh sounded from above.
“Want to come up?” said John. Didn’t he? Could any one imagine
that he didn’t? However, John warned him: “Better wait till we come
down. There’ll be most too many in this tree, I’m afraid.”
Bearing his hat full of cherries he came down the ladder and
Cassy followed. Then Jerry was given permission to go up. This was
a treat he had not expected, to be allowed the freedom of a cherry
tree full of ripe cherries. What bliss!
The boy gave a sigh of great content as he settled himself astride
a huge bough.
“Don’t eat too many,” John warned, “and come down when I call
you.” Jerry promised; he valued John’s good opinion, and moreover
had respect for his authority, and he was not going to do anything to
alter the present pleasant state of things.
Cassy had climbed down safely and stood below, her eyes fixed
on Jerry.
“Isn’t it splendid?” she called up to him.
“I should say so,” came the answer, rather indistinctly by reason of
a mouthful of cherries.
“Here, little one,” said John, “suppose you take these in to your
mother,” and he poured the hatful of shining fruit into Cassy’s
outstretched apron. She ran lightly across the freshly cut grass to the
kitchen where her mother was getting breakfast.
“Just see! Just see!” cried the child, “I’ve been up the tree, and the
robins were there too, and John went up and Jerry is there now. I
picked cherries, real cherries, from the tree myself.” The delight in
her face made her mother stop to kiss her.
“Breakfast is ready,” she told her. “Call Jerry and Mr. McClure.”
And Jerry regretfully was obliged to come down. “You shall help me
to pick them to-morrow,” John told him, and this prospect was
enough to satisfy him.
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